X3L2/96-123

December 18, 1996

1.               
Administrative Issues

1.1.          
UTC membership roll call

1.1.1.      Call
for proxies

NeXT is represented by Ken Whistler

1.1.2.      Roll
call - 15 present, 2 not present, 1 present by proxy

Present: Apple, Digital, HP, IBM, Justsystem, Microsoft, NCR, NeXT (proxy),
Novell, Oracle, Reuters, RLG, SGI, Spyglass, Sybase, Unisys

Not present: Gamma Productions, MGI

Quorum is 9, we have quorum

1.1.3.      List
of participants:

Legend:           P - primary, A - alternate, O -
observer, L - liaison, X - ex-officio
                        x - present, CM -
corporate member, AM - associate member, VP - Vice-
                        President, Unicode
Consortium

1.2.          
Declaration of joint meeting

1.3.          
Registration of new documents

1.4.          
Approval of joint meeting agenda

The agenda as amended was approved. Added items: 6.2.3, 6.2.4, 11.5, 11.6, 11.7

1.5.          
Minutes and action items

1.5.1.      Approval
of minutes UTC #70

Motion to approve the minutes, moved by Adams,
seconded by Uma.

Motion approved: 11 for, 4 abstentions.

Action for Greenfield: Distribute list of attendees
at UTC #70 to members (corporate representative and associates who attended
that meeting).

Action for Greenfield: Correct spelling of Uma’s name
in the minutes. Make sure that spell
checker has correct spelling.

Action for Aliprand: Notify Greenfield of all action items for him from this
meeting.

1.5.2.      Review
of action items X3L2/SD2]

Reviewed, based on UTC 71 #38. The next action item list will combine X3L2
and UTC items in one document (X3L2/SD-2), with AIs in continuous chronological
order. Each AI will be numbered as
either a UTC AI or an X3L2 AI ; these numbers will be in separate columns.

Action for Adams: Contact Everson re WG2 procedures
for Cherokee proposal.

Action for Adams re UTC#70-A32: Document for next UTC
meeting (fonts for public use).

1.6.          
Meeting calendar

UTC, UIC, X3L2, WG2, IRG, WG20 …

Include W3C Conference in Santa Clara, CA, April 7-11, 1997.

Action for Aliprand: Have Greenfield check and revise
meeting calender and distribute to “unicore”.

UTC agreed to cancel March meeting. Winkler proposal: have 3 meetings only, all of them together
with X3L2. This would eliminate the
problems with incomplete information of people who cannot participate in UTC
meetings.

Future dates for the three joint X3L2 & UTC meetings in
1997 are:

May 29-30, 1997.

Aug. 7-8. 1997.

Early December (exact date to be set after dates for Tokyo
IUC are finalized).

John Jenkins offered Apple to host May meeting if Taligent
cannot.

Action item for Aliprand: Check with Davis re
Taligent as host for rescheduled meeting in May.

2.               
Standing items

2.1.          
Errata to Unicode 2.0

Errata should be reported to errata@unicode.org. Editorial corrections will be posted at the
Web site without review by UTC. Errata
affecting technical content will be reviewed by the UTC and posted if
approved. Presently there is only a
glyph error (J with hook).

Action for McGowan: Bring dump of errata to UTC #72
for review.

Action for Aliprand: Notify McGowan of all action
items for him from this meeting.

Ksar expressed concern about errors on the Unicode Web site,
specifically, section on allocation.

3.               
Allocation of scripts

3.1.          
Summary of allocation proposals - Moore, Becker,
McGowan, Whistler [96-111, 96-115]

Whistler reported for Becker. Paper describes

1)    
allocation and coding per se, i.e., the proposals that
are accepted, rejected, or coming down the pipeline.

2)    
Attempts an overall assessment of what should be
encoded on the BMP and what might be encoded on supplementary planes.

Working group included Becker, Jenkins, Ksar, McGowan,
Moore, Whistler.

Becker proposed making it a standing document that shows the
progress for all proposals.

Suggested: BMP to be
filled with selected scripts, based on the expertise of the authors. All contemporary scripts and extinct scripts
with large collections of literature. Intention is to cover all living minority scripts on BMP. The proposal takes into account the proposal
from Everson in 96-101. It leaves room
for the vertical extensions from the IRG (target area was left empty).

Plane 1: all extinct
non Han scripts of the world

Plane 2: all
additional Han characters

Freytag argued for inclusion of ideographic components
within the BMP, to allow representation of characters that have not been
standardized. Adams gave examples from
Chu Nom, but said we should not make a final judgment so soon.

The document is meant for UTC and should not go any further
without some editing of personal opinions.

Motion, moved
by Freytag, seconded by Jenkins:

UTC approves the high level policy decisions in guidelines
document X3L2/96-111:

·        
the 3 plane allocation as to number and nature
(BMP, non Han, Han)

·        
placement of the right-to-left scripts between
Arabic and Devanagari.

·        
the proposed placement of Yi script between
ideographs and hangul.

Motion approved: 15 for, 1 abstention.

UTC should define the progression of the document.

Uma: just guideline
document, not cast in concrete. Eliminate differences with Everson, if possible before submitting

Justsystem abstains as there is not enough room for kanji in
Plane 3. A Chinese dictionary has over
80.000+ characters, so kanji need more space than just one plane. Jenkins said
that any additional ideographic characters can spill over into another plane. Kobayashi said that Han characters need to be organized within their
assigned plane.

Uma said that the document should highlight possible use of
other plans. Ksar pointed out that WG2
does not reserve any planes for anything, so planes cannot be reserved for a
specific use.

Motion, moved by Freytag, seconded by Jenkins:

The UTC accepts the technical content of X3L2/96-111
omitting the comparison section with the Everson proposal and the immediately
preceding sentence starting with “X These …” and will use this document as a
starting point leading to a document that meets the action item to develop a NP
like scope for the 10646-x project in WG2.

Motion approved: 15 for, 1 abstention.

Edit document based on discussions in the meeting - number
of additional Han characters seems to be a bone of contention. Leaving “holes” for efficient allocation of
Kanji needs significant study.

Action for Whistler: Write first cut edited document
within 2 weeks.

The document to be developed will take into account the
e-mail from Sato with the guidelines.

Action for Adams and Suignard: In conjunction with Japanese NSB, draft work
item scope statement on WG2 request for meta-level architecture of ISO
10646.. Targeted date: WG2 meeting in
Singapore. Uma suggested that relevant
parts for the work item should be extracted from document X3L2/96-111.

3.2.          
Allocating Ogham and Runes to the BMP: a
strategy for making the BMP maximally useful - Everson [96-101]

Covered by discussions and decisions in 3.1.

4.               
Specific scripts

4.1.          
Deseret alphabet

4.1.1.      Proposal
for encoding the Deseret Alphabet in ISO 10646 - Jenkins [96-104]

Should go out of the BMP. Jenkins developed this proposal to allow encoding of a script on a supplementary
plane to encourage implementation of UTF-16. Needs 4 columns

Motion, moved by Sargent, seconded by Mariani:

The UTC accepts the Deseret script repertoire, and
recommends that it be encoded off the BMP.

Motion passed: 14 for, 1 abstention, 1 absent from room.

Action for Jenkins: Forward proposal to WG2 as a
contribution from the Unicode Consortium. Give the proposal to Ksar for WG2 mailing.

4.2.          
Yi script

4.2.1.      WG2
N1187 Encoding the Yi script - Everson [96-098]

4.2.2.      WG2
N1415 Proposal for encoding Yi script on BMP - China [96-099]

Whistler has studied
both proposals, Everson proposes a combining tone mark. Everson also proposes spelling of the
syllables in pronounceable form. Ken
suggests that the UTC support the Everson proposal.

Adams: Other syllables of Yi have tome inherent; an
explicit, separate tone mark would be variant treatment. China is researching a revision to their
proposal. Mao is making a trip and will
come back with his findings, but the Chinese probably like their current one. Names are less likely to be am issue than the
tone mark.

Sargent: Implementation question is important. Combining marks are being worked on,
technology will be available some time soon.

Jenkins: preference
for combining way, but no big fight.

Asmus: don’t let us
be boxed in on combining method.

Motion, moved by Freytag, seconded by Jenkins:

Unicode representatives at the WG2 meeting are instructed to
push for principle of use of combining marks, and in all other respects support
Everson’s analysis, that is:

1)    
use of combining marks for tone mark,

2)    
naming of syllables more closely corresponding to Lolo
phonetics,

3)    
addition of Yi radical set.

Motion approved unanimously.

4.3.          
Mongolian

4.3.1.      WG2
N1437 Report of 3^rd Mongolian encoding meeting [96-102]

4.3.2.      WG2
N1438 Draft on encoding Mongolian
character set [96-103]

4.3.3.      About
the function of identifiers of Mongolian Proposal [96-113]

Jenkins: The proposal
looks plausible on the surface, but Becker needs to provide input. Discuss on “Unicore” list.

Glenn: proposal introduces
a identifier character to define the presentation form. We might not be able to avoid the
introduction of this character, as the presentation is not machine
decided. Could this character then be
used with other scripts, like Arabic. More work will be needed in the definition of architectural impact of
the identifier character. The numbers for Mongolian in the roadmap document assume
use of identifier character, not presentation forms Ksar said that we do not
expect a final vote in Singapore..

Guidance for Singapore: get out of the e-mail discussion - contribute!!!

Action for Adams: Summarize unicore discussion for
Singapore.

4.4.          
Uighur, Kazakh and Kirghiz

4.4.1.      Supplement
Arabic with Uighur, Kazakh and Kirghiz [96-112]

Glenn: Presentation forms should not be allowed. They can be predicted by a presentation
engine. The language and the font need
to be known for correct prediction. Another font might need yet different presentation forms

Motion: Moved by Whistler, seconded by Sargent:

The UTC is not in favor of addition of the Arabic
presentation forms as in 96-112 that are renderable by algorithm in accordance
with the character/glyph model.

Approved unanimously.

4.5.          
Runic

4.5.1.      WG2
N1417 2^nd revised proposal for Runic character names [96-100]

Adams: Alternative names for runes were moved to Annex
P. The Swedish NSB now wishes to remove
them.

Freytag: Alternate
names in Unicode should also be in 10646, if requested. Alternative names publishing is easier in
Unicode.

Ksar: Annex P should
not be used as repository for alternate names. Ken supports that.

Suignard: Annex P as
last resort for agreements - we need sensible consensus first.

Uma: WG2 asks for
contributions what goes into annex P, Unicode should contribute.

Motion, moved by Ksar, seconded by Whistler:

The UTC does not support adding the Runic alternate names to
annex P.

Approved by consensus.

Consensus of UTC (including proxy) that Runic can go into
the BMP. Use of Annex P is an
exceptional procedure if no other compromise can be found.

4.6.          
Romanian

4.6.1.      Romanian
request - Suignard [96-109]

This is more a font issue than a coding issue. Romania wants to add characters to Latin-2,
just for the sake of presentation. Addition of the characters would create a migration nightmare.

Carroll: the type
industry wants to make characters look good. Comma and cedillas often look similar. Language and script code allows selection of different font, another
possibility would be to use combining characters with cedilla and/or comma
below.

The motion from UTC #69 opposing addition of these proposed
characters was endorsed !

4.7.          
Armenian

4.7.1.      Suignard

No input

5.               
Current ballots

5.1.          
JTC1 TAG question about JT/96-0432 [96-085]

CD or DIS ballots? European synchronization issue. Wait for JTC1 proposal.

5.2.          
SC2 request for comments on IRG proposal for
6585 additional ideographic characters in the BMP [96-084, 96-086]

UTC and X3L2 support the inclusion in the BMP The Japanese NSB is reported to have said
that some characters might not be legitimate and that only legitimate characters
should get into the BMP, 6585 characters should be re-checked for
legitimacy.

Kobayashi: said that the aim is to make the standard
perfect, and do NOT add incorrect characters. This is the position of the Japanese TAG to SC2.

Motion, moved by Adams, seconded by Jenkins:

The UTC instructs its representatives for WG2 that the UTC
position is to prefer encoding of Vertical Extension A on the BMP, but the
liaisons should remain flexible,.

Approved unanimously.

Jenkins: We want them encoded NOW in 10646. Rather off the BMP now than on BMP in 1-2
years.

5.3.          
DAM#5 Korean repertoire [96-079, 96-080]

5.4.          
DAM#8 Unification CJK ideographs [96-081, 96-082]

5.5.          
Endorsement of Mike
Ksar as convenor of SC2/WG2 [96-096, 96-097]

5.6.          
pDAM#9, Identifiers [96-095]

6.               
Interaction with SC2

6.1.          
Reports and documents from SC2

6.1.1.      Resolutions
from SC2/WG2 meeting in Québec - [96-093]

Dealt with in September UTC meeting. U.S. position deferred to X3L2 meeting.

6.1.2.      Resolutions
from SC2/WG3 meeting in Québec - [96-092]

6.1.3.      Resolutions
from SC2 meeting in Québec - [96-091]

6.2.          
Input for next WG2 meeting

6.2.1.      UTC
positions for WG2 and IRG meetings

IRG positions:

1)    
Position on Vertical Extension A (see above)

2)    
New composition method proposal from Prof. Shih in
Taiwan, who will be attending IRG.. Will
be discussed in Singapore. UTC favors a
standardized composition method, no preference for a specific one. Open issues are the levels and the
position.

Adams asked about the Berkeley meeting with Prof. Lancaster
and his colleagues in September. Whistler said that the attendees were aware of the issues, and have seen
Vertical Extension A. Have a repertoire
of 15K characters that are not in the URO. The 15 K have not been unified, nor have they been checked
against Vertical Extension A.

Adams said that members have been concerned about Hong Kong
characters, and asked whether the UTC should be collecting a US contribution.

Action for Jenkins: Contact point Prof. Lancaster re
working on U.S. contribution to the IRG.

IRG should give UTC the fonts for distribution of information. Glenn has other source. The liaisons are entitled to ask for the
fonts in Singapore.

Action for Jenkins: Draft letter from Consortium (for
Davis to sign) to IRG re getting fonts for Vertical Extension characters.

Jenkins said that lack of characters from CNS 11643 was
hindering acceptance of the Unicode Standard in Taiwan. Only planes 1-3 are in the URO.

Motion: moved by Jenkins, seconded by Uma:

The UTC favors addition of all unique characters from CNS
11643:1992 (all planes) to ISO 10646.

Approved unanimously.

Action item: Jenkins: Have Cora begin work on checking for unique characters in CNS
11643:1992.

6.2.2.      Unicode
Consortium delegate to SC2/WG2 and IRG

Motion: Moved by Adams, seconded by Winkler:

That John Jenkins be the Unicode Consortium’s representative
to the IRG.

Amendment by Freytag: That Jenkins be the Consortium’s
primary representative, with Glenn Adams and Michael Kung as alternates.

Amended motion passed unanimously.

Glenn Adams and Asmus Freytag were appointed Unicode
representatives to WG2 for the meeting in Singapore (by consensus).

6.2.3.      Ethiopic
pDAM #10 text [96-119]

Action item (Adams): Revise pDAM to conform to WG2
instructions.

Motion: moved by Adams, seconded by Jenkins:

The proposed character Ethiopic Space which was present in
WG2 N1420 should be removed upon further consideration, and should not appear
in attachment A or B. Additional study
indicated that this character should have been unified with SPACE, and that no
“intrinsically Ethiopic” space is required.

Motion approved unanimously.

[ Mike Ksar later
informed the Chair that he had made a motion to ensure that the pDAM text
prepared for WG2 was exactly in accord with the original proposal to WG2 (i.e.,
including the Ethiopic space). Neither
the Chair nor the Vice-Chair had recorded this motion. The need for it was eliminated when Glenn
Adams agreed to revise the pDAM text to remove the additions that were not in
accordance with WG2 instructions.]

Action item (Unicode representative on X3L2): When
pDAM comes up for ballot, Ethiopic space should be requested for removal.

Action item (Unicode liaisons to WG2): Communicate
this position informally in Singapore to other representatives.

6.2.4.      Response
to WG2 action item list [96-121]

Action item: Joan and Mike Ksar to clarify
liaison between TC46 and WG2 (Joan).

Discussion about “collection identifiers” after Hangul
changes in 10646. Are they needed in
Unicode, and if so, how? We need to be responsive to requests for collection
identifiers.

Freytag proposed an ad hoc committee to come up with
the Consortium’s position for the WG2 meeting. Ad Hoc Committee members to be Uma, Whistler, Suignard, Hiura.

Quad symbol:

Motion: moved Adams, seconded Jenkins:

The UTC accepts the change of APL quad symbol from 237B to
2395

Motion approved: 15 for, 1 abstention

Action item for Winkler: Distribute WG2 N1396 to X3L2
and UTC

Action item (Freytag and Adams): What should or
should not go into annex P of 10646? Specify a proposal as Unicode reps to WG2.

Action item: Winkler to send WG2 N1416 to Ken Whistler

Action item: Winkler to distribute WG2 N1385 to X3L2 and UTC.

Action item for Adams: Response to proposal for adding special
letters for Nigerian Yoruba (WG2 AI 31-2)

7.               
Script and language codes

7.1.          
Script codes

7.1.1.      Codes
for scripts - proposal from M. Everson [96-088]

7.1.2.      Policy
statement on script codes - Everson [96-087]

Whistler said the issue of script encoding was premature. Is
a standard characterization needed? Postponed to next meeting.

7.2.          
Language tagging

7.2.1.      Language
tagging - Mark Leisher

Mark was unable to prepare anything.

ISO 639 is being revised. Mnemonics are language dependent. Will be discussed further in the next meeting.

8.               
Internet issues

8.1.          
Internet charset tags for Unicode (UTF-7, UTF-8)
- Misha Wolf

We need a position that squares with reality. UTC (at meeting #70) voted to distinguish
between versions. Vendors are not
distinguishing between versions. Misha
recommends a version independent Unicode tag.

Adams pointed out that there are two factors: identification
of the encoding system and identification of the repertoire. “charset” in the MIME context = character
encoding scheme.

Motion moved by Adams, seconded by Wolf:

UTC to register “UTF-8” and “UTF-7” with IANA and undo its
September 1996 decision to register version 2.0 designators (action item
70-A39).

Motion passed by 2/3: 13 for, 2 opposed, 1 abstention

Coding system definition (UTF-8) needs no version as
char-set-name (IETF term for character encoding schema). Version label is a different story. Too specific labeling can lead to rejection
of simple English text, due to a change in Korean.

Uma: In the context
of Internet traffic, using the latest version, “UTF-8” is not ambiguous.

Freytag: Need to work out a general policy on this. Reserve generic names for most up-to-date
version, with distinctions for previous versions. Mariani pointed out the problem of using
“UTF-8” as a generic when it is embedded in data.

8.2.          
Report - IAB character set workshop - Chris
Weider [96-107]

For information

9.               
Unicode International Conferences

9.1.          
Mainz, Germany - March 10-12, 1997

Hard work of a small bunch of volunteers. Misha asks that member companies put links to
web pages into their networks.

9.2.          
USA

San Jose, September 3-5, 1997. Misha is chairing the editorial board of the
IUC.

9.3.          
Japan

Tokyo, early December. Exact date still to be finalized.

10.          
Old business

10.1.      
Equivalence of combining characters -WG20 [96-089]

Unicode definition of equivalence will be used in WG20’s
sorting standard.

11.          
Other business

11.1.      
WG20 request for character property tables [WG20 N498]

To be handled by the Officers.

11.2.      
Unicode compression - Wolf, Whistler, Wicksteed,
Davis [96-110]

All we can do is to define the process of how to
progress. Wolf recommends to leave it on
the Unicore discussion list a little bit longer. Empower Wolf to post the revised draft
documents according to the W3C method (old, current, editors...)

Action item for Wolf: act as editor for a draft document with feedback from today and to
96-110, by January 31, 1997. Discussion
on Unicore, also disposition of comments.

Action item for Adams: Create a “Working Paper” section on the Web
site. install document on web site and
create a section for comments

Action for Aliprand/Winkler: Withdraw 70-A14 action
item.

11.3.      
UNIX and Unicode - Gary Roberts

UNIX does not support Unicode to a great extent. Why this, and how do we alleviate this
problem. A UNIX SIG would be of great
value for all interested parties. Freytag suggested that Roberts form a SIG to discuss the issue and come
up with recommendations.

Rannenberg: X/Open
has strong recommendations for APIs.

Action for Roberts: Collect names of people
interested in working in the SIG. (Mariani, Texin, Rannenberg, Kung, Hiura expressed interest.)

Action item for Roberts: create list of issues, report via “unicore”
list or else at May UTC meeting.

11.4.      
Apostrophe clarification - Mark Davis [96-108]

No discussion document provided.

11.5.      
UTF-8 Hart [96-114]

Hart: What to do with
undefined codes?

Freytag: standard
does not define what should happen. For
illegal input, the Unicode sample implementation will react in a compatible
manner, the generic algorithm allows anything.

Ksar: Implementation
guidelines can be followed, other implementations might do different things.

11.6.      
Meaning of UTC votes on standards in context
with WG2 work

Whistler: difficulty
of keeping Unicode and 10646 standards in sync. Old model: UTC decides, lobbies
WG2 for acceptance... New model of
co-operation with X3L2 changes the situation somewhat, how should UTC work?

Freytag: Consensus
through submitting to WG2 instead of accepting into Unicode. Tracking of status of proposals is a
necessity. Pipeline ad-hoc group could
possibly update the pipeline document in real time.

Adams: who drives
whom? or cooperation.

Uma: both standards
are quite stable, less confrontation occurs.

Ksar: things have
changed to the better over the last few years. WG2 tracking mechanism is available, check if we can enhance it

Hart: go through WG2
has advantages of worldwide acceptance.

Asmus: Do we have the
documented approval of our membership? We need or own tracking, especially if our feedback is not accepted by
WG2. Ksar agrees.

Jenkins: what is the
process and flow of proposals.

Action item Ksar: send out URL of Thygessen document.

Action item Uma, Ken, Jenkins: Draft UTC process flow
additions to this document.

11.7.      
Standards subset of Unihan (collection)

No comments

12.          
Character glyph model

12.1.      
Status - Hart, Griffee

Ed Hart reports about input from NB. Al Griffee and Ed Hart will meet on the
weekend to resolve comments A
disposition of comments will be distributed to UTC and X3L2.

13.          
Review of recommendations to X3L2, and action
items

14.          
Closing of joint meeting

The Chair thanked NCR for hosting the meeting, and Gary Roberts
making the arrangements.